READING JOURNALS

As understood in this course, a reading journal is a type of diary by means of which you focus your thoughts on the reading material, record references to key passages, articulate questions that the texts seem to raise, and sometimes try out answers to those questions. The reading journal will be an electronic document (a blog) with your name and the course number prominently displayed. You will find the blog/journal set-up instructions on your course schedule under the first class meeting’s homework.

You should make entries in your journal for at least three poems from each class day's assigned reading. You may make entries for more poems from the assigned reading or from additional relevant reading within or without the course text. A typical entry should have (a) objective heading material, (b) line-by-line comments, and (c) reflective comments.

Each entry must be a minimum of 300 words (although) it can be more.

(a) The heading material should include the date of entry and objective data about the text, such as the author's name, the title of the work, the birth and death dates of the author, the language, nationality, and gender of the author, and the date of publication of the work. You might want to add other heading information, such as an indication of the type of work this is (for example, ballad or satire) or an indication of other works that seem particularly interesting to associate with it and the reasons for those associations (for example, similarity of narrative structure or of theme).

As you read, of course, you ought to mark your texts, not only underscoring key words or passages but indicating in the book's margins why those passages are key or at least what they contain (for example, "central image" or "thematic reversal").

(b) In your reading journal you may want to record those comments by page and line number and amplify them. The process of writing as one reads often leads to promising stray thoughts that one doesn't want to forget but doesn't want to stop reading to pursue. These stray thoughts should also go in the reading journal.  IN A SECTION OF YOUR POST THAT YOU WILL TITLE "NOTES."

(c) At least as important as the stray thoughts are the thoughts that arise after the reading (and typically, with poetry, multiple rereadings) is complete and one has had a chance to digest the work a bit, both by reflection and by looking back through it and through one's marginal notes. At that point, you ought to write down your observations about anything in the poem that seems interesting (for example, style, characterization, setting, tone, moral, and so on) indicating whether those observations feel conclusive or provisional. If provisional, you ought to try to frame questions that might test those observations. And if you then find answers, they should be added, too. If you have not yet done so, at that point you should also indicate pages and lines on which important passages may be found, be they important for framing or answering the questions in the entry or simply important as examples of something that you find striking. Each such reference should be accompanied by a few words indicating your idea of the passage's importance. These ideas, like all ideas in the reading journals, should be thought of as susceptible to revision as discussion, further reflection, and further reading suggest new understandings of individual poems and of literature in general.

A typical entry, then, will have (a) heading information, (b) a section of comparatively unorganized notes made during reading, and (c) a section of somewhat more organized observations made after reflection and review of the text and of the beginning of the journal entry.

In addition to thoughts on individual works made before, during, and immediately after the reading (and rereading) of each text, the reading journal should also record your more general observations and questions about poetry and your specific discoveries about etymology, allusion, and other extratextual matters. These observations and discoveries may well serve to focus class discussion and/or to lead you to your own paper topics.

By writing in the reading journal, you focus your ideas. Once written, those ideas can be shared and developed with others.

POST YOUR JOURNAL ENTRY TO YOUR BLOG ON EACH ASSIGNED DATE AND BRING A HARDCOPY OF THIS JOURNAL ENTRY TO CLASS THE NEXT DAY.

At the beginning of each class, you should exchange journal entries with a classmate. You should read your classmate's reading journal entries for the material for that day and then make a written response to one or more of those entries. Your response might comment on the virtues or weaknesses of each entry as a self-teaching tool; it might try to offer an answer to one or more of the questions posed; it might pose new questions in relation to the observations presented; and it might try to help in the development of such general ideas as possible paper topics. You should clearly sign your name on  the comments you make in your classmate's reading journal. During the course of the semester, you should try to get written comments from as many of your classmates as possible.

THESE HARDCOPIES WITH NOTES FROM YOUR CLASSMATES SHOULD BE KEPT IN A SEPARATE SECTION OF YOUR NOTEBOOK THAT YOU USE FOR THE COURSE.  THESE MUST BE HANDED  IN AT THE END OF THE TERM!  DON'T LOSE THEM!

Each day, after you retrieve your journal and have had a chance to read your classmate's written commentary on your entries, we can begin class discussion of the texts indicated on the syllabus.

This journal should be your record not only for the material listed by title on the syllabus but for all other reading work and creative work you do in this course. You should make additional journal entries here for research you may do in secondary texts to illuminate the poems and for reading you may do to widen your knowledge of a poetic type or an author. This makes your own review of your progress in the course easy. Whenever you do review, feel strongly encouraged to write cross-referenced further thoughts and to add new observations, ideas, and questions wherever they seem appropriate or at the end. Be sure you date and clearly label all such additional entries for reference.

Since your reading journal will be read by others.  Given the nature of the entries, fragment sentences may well be quite reasonable, but illegible words are not. The typical entry for a poem probably should be no more than a handwritten page.

When you bring the printed copy of your journal entry to class, leave at least a third of a page after each entry both so that your classmate has room to write and so that you have room to jot further notes based on that response and/or on class discussion. I will look over your shoulders and comment on these journals in class each day.

At the end of the term, your last entry will be a thoughtful evaluation of the use the journal was to you. In this evaluation, reference by date and title your earlier entries so that this self-evaluation can make concrete references to examples in your journal.